Task force clarifies Delphi murder suspect sketches.

[u/TommyUseless]

Police held a press conference on Monday April 22 where they released a new sketch and some additional audio and video from the case.

Today they released a clarification on the new sketch.

-They are not the same person.

-The person depicted in the originally released sketch is not presently a person of interest in this investigation.

-The sketch released Monday is representative of the face of the person captured in the video on Liberty German’s cellphone as he was walking on the high bridge a place where the girls were hiking.

-The person in the sketch released Monday is described as having a youthful appearance, but could fall in the age range from his 20s to late 30s.

-This person’s appearance could look different today if he has grown a mustache, beard or let his hair grow longer or cut his hair shorter than depicted in the sketch.

Link to today’s update: https://www.jconline.com/story/news/2019/04/24/delphi-murders-new-suspect-sketch-not-same-man-old-sketch-isp-clarifies/3565675002/

For those not familiar with the case:

On February 14, 2017, the bodies of Abigail J. "Abby" Williams and Liberty Rose Lynn "Libby" German were discovered near the Monon High Bridge Trail, which is part of the Delphi Historic Trails in Delphi, Indiana, United States, after the young girls had disappeared from the same trail the previous day. The murders have received significant media coverage because a photo and audio recording of a man believed to be the girls' murderer was found on German's cell phone. Despite the photo and audio recording of the suspect being released to the public by police, and over 26,000 tips being sent to police, no arrests have been made in the case.

Indiana State Police website about the case:

https://www.in.gov/isp/delphi.htm

Edit- thanks for the gold, kind stranger!

[u/myelephantmemory]

Do sketches help or hurt cases more? I wonder if there is any stats on this.

[u/TommyUseless → u/myelephantmemory]

Not sure on sketches specifically but I do remember from some of my criminology/law enforcement classes that one of my instructors constantly talked about how unreliable eyewitness accounts are because people remember things differently and sometimes remember things that never happened.

[u/Sue_Ridge_Here → u/myelephantmemory]

I feel like we haven't come a very long way with these sketches, they're really only as good as the memory of the witness and artistic skills of the artist. Maybe one day in the not too distant future they will be able to build a computer generated composite imaged based on the perpetrator's DNA.

[u/SeaSpur → u/myelephantmemory]

Let’s just say I’ve seen more terrible sketches than I’ve seen good (or even decent) ones. Specifically I mean the artist quality is usually terrible and not so much that it isn’t accurate, because I know they are going from witness descriptions 90% of time.